Fish and Wildlife Commission may lose power

Fish and Wildlife Commission may lose power

Legislation: Policy-making authority could be transferred to a new
oversight committee in wake of recent disputes

Bob Mottram; The News Tribune
December 19, 2001

Some Washington lawmakers may attempt during the next legislative session
to strip the state Fish and Wildlife Commission of its authority to set the
state's fish and wildlife policy.

The lawmakers would create a new oversight committee of legislators to set
policy for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and would relegate the Fish
and Wildlife Commission to an advisory role.

Trouble has been brewing over several issues between some lawmakers and the
nine-person commission, whose members are appointed by the governor and
confirmed by the Senate. Those issues include cougar hunting, duck hunting
and steelhead fishing.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission lost its policy-making power once before,
in 1988, when then-Gov. Booth Gardner took it for himself in return for a
promise to provide general fund revenues to help support the department.
Washington voters restored power to the commission in 1995 by overwhelming
passage of Referendum 45.

"The premise of Referendum 45 was that we were going to take politics out
of wildlife again," said Ed Owens, a natural resources consultant from
Olympia. "Yet the commission is swayed by who shows up and how many of them
show up at a commission meeting."

Owens said the legislation under consideration by lawmakers would create an
oversight committee of six senators and six House members, with no more
than three on each side from the same political party. Members would be
appointed by the House speaker and Senate president. The committee would be
structured along the lines of the Legislative Transportation Committee,
which oversees the Washington Department of Transportation.

The new committee would establish goals, policies and objectives for the
Fish and Wildlife Department and monitor their implementation, Owens said.
It also would establish basic fishing and hunting rules and possibly set
fishing and hunting seasons.

All of the powers that currently reside with the Fish and Wildlife
Commission would transfer to the new committee.

Rep. Jim Buck (R-Joyce), a member of the House Natural Resources Committee
and its former chairman, said he and other lawmakers had discussed such a
bill "primarily because there is no direct accountability to voters with
what happens with the Wildlife Commission.

"There is a conflict between the Legislature and the Wildlife Commission
over who makes policy," Buck said. "Even though the (state law) says the
commission is the policy-making body, its policies are really rule-making
that are within the context of what we the Legislature determine is the
direction we want the department to go in."

A major point of friction between lawmakers and commission members has been
cougar hunting in the aftermath of Initiative-655. That was a measure
sponsored and promoted by a national animal-rights organization that
outlawed the hunting of cougars and bears with hounds, which is the only
way cougars can be hunted efficiently. In the years immediately following
passage of that measure, reports of encounters between cougars and people
increased, and the Legislature finally passed a bill to liberalize the
hound rules somewhat for reasons of public safety.

"Frankly, we as a Legislature made a policy decision that we were going to
have a limited reinstatement of cougar hunting (with hounds)," Buck said.
"And I think the commission erred in trying to modify that policy decision;
in trying to fit the interests of some interest groups in spite of the
policy that we made."

The commission "made it so difficult to take out a cougar," Buck said,
"that it was almost not a viable process."

A similar thing is happening with steelhead, Buck said. The commission is
considering proposals by the Department of Fish and Wildlife either to
prohibit anglers entirely from retaining wild steelhead trout or to
standardize retention rules statewide and make them generally more
conservative. The issue has been controversial.

The commission's ban this year on use of electrically powered duck decoys,
known as "robo ducks," is another example, Buck said.

"There was no discussion back and forth between the Legislature and the
commission about what's a policy decision and what's not," he said. "And
we've harped on it long enough that apparently they're not interested in
having a discussion."

Russ Cahill, chairman of the Fish and Wildlife Commission, said some
lawmakers were upset "about some narrow things - robo ducks, access to
public lands - and they criticized us for not going as far as they thought
we would in getting hound hunting back in."

Some lawmakers have told him the commission is going beyond legislative
policy, Cahill said, but policy can be hard to discern.

"If they want us to do certain things, they can pass statutes that tell us
to do it," he said.

Ed Owens, the resources consultant, said of the potential legislation:

"I think it may be a shot across the (commission's) bow. I think it's going
to be an opportunity for some compromises to be reached."

Owens said he has found in travels to meetings of fishing and hunting
groups around the state that "it's clear there is a pretty high level of
angst/anger about how the commission has been working."

He is surprised, Owens said, that he has not heard outright opposition from
sports groups to the concept of a legislative oversight committee. He said
he sent information about the subject to more than 200 outdoors
organizations, and among the 15 or 20 that replied so far, "there's a
willingness to take a good, hard look at this."

John Kelly of the King County Outdoor Sports Council said his group
believes the issue "needs to get on the table and at least get discussed"
during the next legislative session.

"We feel the present system is not working," he said. "And that's a hard
thing to say, because I helped to get (Referendum 45) passed" by the
Legislature in 1995.

Kelly said that during the last three or four years, his group has become
alarmed over "the rejection of science by several on the commission, and
substituting basically their own science (for that of the department's
professional staff).

"Some of these commissioners are developing very close relationships with
special interests," he said.

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